Fencing at Imperial
Friday:
Met Jo, who was down in London on a work thing, for a drink at the Porterhouse. Nice venue, great beers but seriously packed.
Saturday:
Pub meet. Usual recipe of alcohol, good company and geeky conversation.
Sunday:
Fenced for ULU at Imperial. Strange, walking back into the Beit Quad for the first time in well over a decade! Due to a shortage of people, I had to fence foil as well as epée. Hell, they would have made me fence sabre too, if someone else hadn't showed up at the last moment. We won quite comfortably but I must admit to a slight regret, being an IC Old Boy and all that. When they learned I was ex-IC, some of the IC guys did start to ask why I wasn't fencing for them - "ULU asked me and you didn't!" so I now appear to have volunteered to help assemble a list of IC alumni fencers...
Oh - in terms of great things to do when a couple of teammates are congratulating you on a 5-1 victory in your first foil bout, saying "Well, that was unexpected" probably isn't too brilliant... Rather embarassingly, I think I did rather better at foil than epée...
Started playing Half Life 2 Episode 2. HL2 is still an excellent single-player game, it's just that I'm starting to miss certain features which have become standard on other FPSs, most notably the lean left/right feature.
Finished reading Planet Germany. Thoroughly enjoyed it, even the bits which didn't involve "Chang", especially the parts about the lack of embarassment Germans show about bodily functions. At one point I was actually convulsing with laughter on the Tube, tears streaming down my face reading about the gassy effects of many German foods! Of course, I have the advantage of knowing all the major dramatis personae, making everything that bit more vivid but still extremely funny nonetheless and very well observed, including things I was barely aware of like my habit of sitting bolt upright when a calculation didn't go as planned which, on a wheelie chair on a wooden floor, meant I'd go skittering backwards!
Now reading Winter War by William R Trotter, about the 1939-1940 Russo-Finnish War. A bit of a contrast.
Torchwood: Still doesn't set my world on fire but I thought a distinct improvement on last season.
Primeval: Definitely a guilty pleasure. Silly but fun. Miss Claudia though.
Realised last night that I have just under 2 weeks to go before I'm off to Melbourne. Eek.
Met Jo, who was down in London on a work thing, for a drink at the Porterhouse. Nice venue, great beers but seriously packed.
Saturday:
Pub meet. Usual recipe of alcohol, good company and geeky conversation.
Sunday:
Fenced for ULU at Imperial. Strange, walking back into the Beit Quad for the first time in well over a decade! Due to a shortage of people, I had to fence foil as well as epée. Hell, they would have made me fence sabre too, if someone else hadn't showed up at the last moment. We won quite comfortably but I must admit to a slight regret, being an IC Old Boy and all that. When they learned I was ex-IC, some of the IC guys did start to ask why I wasn't fencing for them - "ULU asked me and you didn't!" so I now appear to have volunteered to help assemble a list of IC alumni fencers...
Oh - in terms of great things to do when a couple of teammates are congratulating you on a 5-1 victory in your first foil bout, saying "Well, that was unexpected" probably isn't too brilliant... Rather embarassingly, I think I did rather better at foil than epée...
Started playing Half Life 2 Episode 2. HL2 is still an excellent single-player game, it's just that I'm starting to miss certain features which have become standard on other FPSs, most notably the lean left/right feature.
Finished reading Planet Germany. Thoroughly enjoyed it, even the bits which didn't involve "Chang", especially the parts about the lack of embarassment Germans show about bodily functions. At one point I was actually convulsing with laughter on the Tube, tears streaming down my face reading about the gassy effects of many German foods! Of course, I have the advantage of knowing all the major dramatis personae, making everything that bit more vivid but still extremely funny nonetheless and very well observed, including things I was barely aware of like my habit of sitting bolt upright when a calculation didn't go as planned which, on a wheelie chair on a wooden floor, meant I'd go skittering backwards!
Now reading Winter War by William R Trotter, about the 1939-1940 Russo-Finnish War. A bit of a contrast.
Torchwood: Still doesn't set my world on fire but I thought a distinct improvement on last season.
Primeval: Definitely a guilty pleasure. Silly but fun. Miss Claudia though.
Realised last night that I have just under 2 weeks to go before I'm off to Melbourne. Eek.